By Eva Ciabattoni

My friend Lucy gave me her copy of “44 Scotland Street” (Anchor, 2005) as an example of an author doing an outstanding job of portraying an unlikable character in a sympathetic way.

The author, Alexander McCall Smith, who also wrote the “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” series and “The Kalahari Typing School for Men,” is also a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh.

The unlikable character, I assume, is Bruce, the narcissistic roommate of Pat, the rather dull employee of Matthew, an aimless art gallery owner. Or could it be Irene, pushy mother of 5-year-old saxophone prodigy Bertie, who is kicked out of his preschool for writing graffiti on the bathroom walls in Italian? Or maybe Sasha and Raeburn Todd, who go ahead with the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball despite the low number of attendees, and attempt to assert their superiority by seating another couple at a separate table rather than allow them to dine at the main table?

Both “44 Scotland Street” and its upcoming sequel were written as daily installments for The Scotsman newspaper. McCall Smith writes that the “real challenge … is to keep the momentum going without becoming too staccato in tone” and that “one has to have at least one development in each installment and end with a sense that something more must happen.”

The thread that holds the plot together is the search for a painting that Bruce carelessly donated to the ball. Pat and Matthew spend the rest of the book tracking down the painting, referred to as the “Peploe?,” for its possible artist.

It’s clear that McCall Smith genuinely likes his characters for all their foibles, a fact he admits in the introduction, wherein he writes that he could not bear to part from the characters and thus is writing a second book. The characters are saved from true unlikability by the opportunities McCall gives them to show another side of themselves. Bruce shows up for the ball in a kilt, but he notices over drinks that he forgot his underwear (who hasn’t dreamed that particular nightmare at least once in his life?). Pat develops some grit; Matthew shows an unexpectedly generous side. Only unfortunate Irene is left unredeemed.

McCall deploys subtle humor to prick conceits, old and new. Psychotherapy is good-naturedly but thoroughly skewered via the character of Dr. Fairbairn, the author of “Shattered to Pieces: Ego Dissolution in a Three-Year-Old Tyrant.” When Wee Fraser, the subject of the case history, bites Fairbairn, he describes the act as, “The young patient then attempted the oral incorporation of the analyst.” Irene fantasizes not only about Fairbairn but also about the case study he might write about Bertie, “A Remarkably Talented Boy and His Problems in Adjusting to a Mediocre Society.” In the end, Bertie is sentenced to attend a Rudolf Steiner school (this pricked a conceit of my own, as both my kids have attended Steiner schools since kindergarten).

I enjoyed the short chapters and the gentle tone, and I found myself looking forward to my nightly forays to “44 Scotland Street.”

“44 Scotland Street” is available at the Los Altos Library.